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Literature: Hamlet without Hamlet

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Margreta de Grazia’s recent book on Hamlet looks to be a beauty. She claims that modern interpretations (since 1800) have missed the main premise of the play - namely, that Hamlet is dispossessed of his place and realm, and that the entire court agrees with the dispossession. Only in private, or in antic jest, can he say what really troubles him, since, as Edward Coke said, those who are non compos mentis “cannot be cause of his transformation.” De Grazia points to persistent links in the play between persons and plots, plots of land that is, and sees the whole play as a series of battles over land. She ranges widely, arguing that “the onset of the modern epoch was itself imagined as a disembedding or deracination,” and argues that “the play situates the fall of Denmark within both an imperial history of territorial transfer (ancient and modern) and Britain’s own history of conquest in the eleventh century by both Danes and Normans.”

The one initial puzzle is de Grazia’s claim to novelty. If memory serves, John Dover Wilson’s What Happens in Hamlet brings out the dynastic issue quite clearly. De Grazia cites Wilson only a handful of times, and never in direct support of her thesis.

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, September 29, 2008 at 4:58 pm

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Literature: Hamlet without Hamlet

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